A TALE OF THE PLANTATIONS.f
ANTHONY SHIPLEY is one of a company of twenty-five convicts whom the 'Sally ' of London carries out to Fredericks- burg in Virginia. He shows himself to be of different clay from his companions when he is on board ship, when be is put up for sale, as the custom was in those days, and when he is set to work on the plantation of that stately lady, Madame Rolleston of Pine Mount. The story, admirably told by Mr. Can., pictures for us in vivid colours the youth's life among his new surroundings : how he bore himself to the quality, to his task-master the overseer, and to his fellow-slaves. There are two circles, so to speak, in this Virginian world. In the upper are Madame, her son Hugh, her daughter Joyce, • The Sea and its Story. By Captain F. H. Shaw and Ernest A. Robinson. London: Cassell and Co. [9s. net.] t The Boy Bondsman; or, Under the Lulu By Rent Comm. London: S. W. Partridge and Co. [5s.] and sundry Virginian cavaliers whom the same Joyce, just passing from girlhood to womanhood, is already drawing to her feet. In the other we have Anthony's fellow-labourers; first and foremost comes Nat Pet, in whose cabin he is quartered,—he is perhaps tlie best of Mr. Carr's studies of character; another figure is "Field Cynthia" (so called to distinguish her from "Cynthia of the House"), a pathetic little sketch with her brown baby, who plays a not unimportant part in the drama. Of incident and adventure there is certainly no lack. The daily work in the tobacco-fields, when there was a high-spirited slave, and masters unused to any- thing but servile submission, would not lack excitement. Then there is the running away, the taming of the unmanage- able horse, the subduing of the bloodhounds, the escape, the rescue of the heroine when she is carried off by the Yenito Indians, the encounter with the famous freebooter Blaekbeard, and finally the denoilment, when we find out who this wonderful Anthony really is, and how he has come to work on a Virginian plantation. No one can say that Mr. Carr deals out these excitements with a niggardly hand. And if there is plenty of vigorous action, there is also a skilful presentation of life. These Virginian cavaliers and dames are just what Thackeray might have drawn. The Boy Bondsman is a very happy effort.
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